Between the Lines
by Les Gnossiennes
Summary: "If Erik's secrets cease to be Erik's secrets, it will be a bad lookout for a goodly number of the human race!" In which Christine stumbles upon some personal items she was not meant to find. Eventual smut. Unbeta'd.
1. Hell Spurs On

The most remarkable aspect of Christine's captivity was how utterly unremarkable it had been; the immensely peculiar circumstances of her abduction, which had left her with a miasma of resentment, anger, and pity, had faded into something that almost resembled a normal waking life. For a man who swore to lay heaven and earth at her feet, who had cloaked the initial months of their relationship in the most absurd deceit and mystery, Erik had been a downright mundane captor.

If it weren't for his awesome hideousness and the reality that she was trapped five stories beneath one the most trafficked sections of Paris, Christine would have felt that she had been left to the devices of a well-meaning distant relative. Mornings were for lonely breakfasts and detached voice lessons, their prior intimacy having died along with the Angel. Afternoons, for books and reflection and endless, fruitless praying while Erik left her to do whatever ghosts did during the day, which appeared to be harassing innocent people. Evenings, to awkward dinners that vacillated between clinical conversation and one-sided declarations of adoration over wine. It was almost as if she were sixteen again, where her existence had been consumed by her role as Mama Valerius's companion and the anxieties of the Conservatory-singing for her sanity and miming her way through life's little patterns to hide how much she was screaming inside.

And then there was sleep. Empty, dreamless sleep that left her feeling neither tormented or well-rested. She awoke each morning with a growing sense of clarity, and it made her feel none the better. Every day, I die a little death at Erik's feet and am reborn into this misery.

Sometimes she entertained herself at the piano in the sitting room, plunking out the paltry knowledge she had picked up over her years of study-parlor songs, scales, passages of Schubert. Erik had tenderly given her permission to amuse herself with the instrument however she liked, but it was a mixed blessing. If Christine so much as struck out a note on the keyboard while Erik was home, he would immediately rush into the room and to gently scold her-her fingers weren't arched properly, she slouched too much, pedals were there for a reason; all of the simple joy she had ever derived from those keys had been snuffed out by him.

But mostly, Christine read. If Erik had trapped her in a world where music was both her only happiness and also the biggest source of her despair, books were still a trusted friend. The impossibly high shelves lining the wall of his sitting room sat packed with all odds and ends-fashionable novels, tracts scientific and philosophical, and endless poetry. None of it surprised her, even the gilt-edged bibles and what she surmised was a beautifully detailed copy of the Qu'ran. For, in spite of his wretched godlessness, which he loved to tease her with, Erik was still very much a man of the world.

It had been nearly a week since that surreal night in which Christine had wrenched off his mask and had condemned herself to this tedium. She found herself that afternoon sitting with a bound copy of _Nana_, her hands trembling as she held the book that had been all the rage in France for the last year. Erik was out "running errands, and if he had a nose, Christine would have imagined it wrinkling as he told her. She had been listlessly scanning through his library when her eyes fell upon the novel, wedged in tightly with a collection of Zola's other works. _Nana_ was a story that had always struck her curiosity and one that Mama had forbidden from their apartment, insisting that it was the sort of thing good Catholic girls did not read.

I have lived my life as best as I could , she reasoned. I asked for God's guidance, and He has dropped me in a basement with a mad man.

She grabbed _Nana_ and threw herself down onto a couch.

Within less than an hour, it became abundantly clear that _Nana_ was, what some would say, a trifle warm for Christine's sensibilities. Its titular protagonist, a talent-less Parisienne singer with something of an appetite for conquest, horrified her; the men loved Nana, not for her voice, but for her vulgarity and lewdness, and in the end, it killed them all, heroine included. But it wasn't just the explicit text that drilled its way into Christine's conscience. It was the absolute familiarity with which Zola had imparted his scruple-less lady. Nana was every saucy ballet rat and heavy-lidded mezzo soprano in the company at the Garnier. Nana, the artless theater trollop. Christine, the brainless opera hoyden.

"The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for Nana to destroy them, she had to soil them too."

She hurled the book over the coffee table and crossed her arms, feeling embarrassed for herself. She derived no pleasure from her defiance of Mama's orders, nor from the words themselves. _Nana_ was ashes in her mouth. She briefly wondered if the familiarity had struck Erik, too—if he had read it and thought of the mouth-breathing blue bloods who sauntered outside of dance salons and dressing rooms like dogs, the charwomen looking for an escape from their grueling lives, if he thought of her—

It has always been a strange and cruel assumption people made about Christine-that she was childlike. Innocent. Naive. Uneager, perhaps. Inexperienced, certainly. But she had lived these past twenty-one years on the road and in the theater, and there were certain realities to be expected in those respective paths; her Papa and Mama Valerius had done the best they could to cloak her in virtue, but the world was so much larger than them and their simple, safe morals.

And she sat there in the prim, old-fashioned sitting room and wondered if everyone saw her like they did Nana. Did the management? Did Raoul? He must have, between what the rest of the de Changey family likely thought of her and the way she had been giving him the run around prior to her kidnapping.

_Did Erik?_

Erik had proclaimed his great love for her, after all, and he was only a man. While she had stopped taking her sewing scissors with her when she went to bathe, she never forgot the weight of his gaze, even when he left her alone this far below the ground. The way his long fingers flexed around her wrist as he guided her to the couch-

It was as if Erik was in the room with her, the horror of her memories struck Christine so keenly. She sprang to her feet and, crossing her arms over her chest, paced over to the ornate sideboard by the fireplace, where a water pitcher and glass sat waiting. Pouring herself a glass with shaky hands, Christine willed the vile thought out of her head as best as she could- that wretched, disgusting, hideous man -but still felt as if she had been riding down a sled in the snow too quickly and had smacked her head into a tree.

The piano would bring her no distraction-it only made her think about his hands, her wrist-and lying down in bed felt like a sin. A book. Another book. Any book! I don't care if it's Pilgrim's Progress or Shakespeare or Ibsen or nursery rhymes. I will read my bible from cover to cover twice over before touching that horrid _Nana_ again.

His bookshelves were meticulously carved monstrosities, easily seven or eight feet at their highest. Erik was able to reach the top shelves with the assistance of a small stepping stool; Christine was less fortunate. Not only was she short for a young woman, but God had gifted her a spectacular case of short-sitedness that made squinting a necessity. Craning her neck up at the books on the higher shelves was a lost cause-they practically disappeared in the gaslight.

Resigned, Christine flopped down to the ground and assessed the volumes closest to her. They were the heavier books-encyclopedias, textbooks, all dry reading that would do little to chase away the visions of Erik's "devotion" that made her stomach wrench. She was about to give up her search and resign herself to her sewing, a boring task made downright evil in this setting, when she ran her fingers across a series of large, leather-bound ledgers tucked inconspicuously towards the end of the shelf.

There was nothing to distinguish them from any of the other scores of books in the room, let alone any given titles, and yet something about them made Christine's heart thump against her rib cage.

A woman's curiosity .

She clamped her fingers along the top of the first one's spine and pried it away from its companions with all the care and concentration of a surgeon. As the book revealed itself, it quickly became apparent that this was no properly published text-rather, a collection of loose papers, all clasped together between the covers by a buckled leather strap. Like a portfolio, Christine supposed, and her body stiffened as she felt its contents shift around.

She lowered the book gingerly to join her on the floor and stared at it. Minutes seemed to have passed, during which she debated with herself about the next course of action: should she open the blasted thing? Return it to the shelf? Ask Erik what was in it? Never mention it again?

He was a strange man who made his living on hiding and keeping secrets. It only seemed reasonable to assume that if Erik didn't want Christine to know what the book contained, he wouldn't have given her such ample access to its contents.

Her hands flew to the leather strap and unbuckled it as simply as one would unbuckle their shoe.

"It's probably sheet music or old building plans," she said aloud, as if the air itself would confirm her thoughts.

This was Christine's first mistake.

* * *

Note: I haven't written fan fiction in years. Would gladly welcome comments.


	2. The Courage to Execute

There were oysters for dinner that night-a whole dozen on the half shell, served on a majolica tray and accompanied by a dainty set of oyster forks. Christine almost laughed when she was first presented with the dish, so patently absurd was the idea of being served oysters five stories beneath the ground-but the queer, closed expression on Erik's unmasked face was enough to make her remember herself.

It was for the best; their dinners were usually quiet affairs, the one part of the day where Erik wasn't either away from the house on the lake or vexing her with his relentless critique of her voice, a habit that had only gotten worse after she had truly seen him. But dinner was different. He tried to be cordial, he really did-sharing gossip like a young girl, telling her all manner of jokes, trying to do everything his wrought corpse could do to make any of this insanity feel normal or right.

And Christine had almost started falling for it, foolish girl, beginning to believe that he was content to have her as a mere companion in his house who wanted nothing more than to treat him like a close relative-until she found the portfolio that afternoon. What she had within those pages had changed everything, every little sigh and gesture of those hands now suspect and sinful and-

"Christine?" Her fork clattered on the plate, and her hands reflexively flew into her chest.

Now that she had emboldened him by burning his masks, Christine wasn't sure which had been harder to bear: the extent of his deformities or the intensity of his expressions, which, despite his monstrousness, were uncomfortably human. In those first hours after Erik had abducted her, she had thought trying to discern the moods of someone covering their entire face would drive her mad; now, especially after the binder, she wasn't so sure.

"Are we not hungry, Christine?"

His voice was singsong, teasing, cajoling her out of her thoughts. She cautiously raised her gaze up from her lap to meet his own. Erik held a glass of wine, his malformed lips stretched into an approximation of a gentle grin. He never meant for you to see those things. Men are strange, and he is all the stranger; poor soul. He is trying.

"You've been picking at your meal like a little bird," he continued when she didn't respond, taking a long pull from his cup. While Erik still refused to eat in front of Christine, he had allowed himself to indulge in his impressive wine collection-perhaps too much to her liking. The spirits made him easy-going and indolent, but they also loosened his already wicked tongue.

"No," she replied, bracing herself, doing her best to smile and lifting her fork. "I'm hungry. I was simply distracted."

"It's not Erik's wretchedness spoiling your appetite, is it, little bird?"

This again. This baiting. I cannot bear it. "Of course not, Erik. Haven't I already said so?"

"You say a lot of things. The rub is divining which ones you actually mean, isn't it?"

"You're being mean," Christine said shortly, wrinkling her nose and grabbing her own glass of wine. It was a white, to go with the oysters, acidic and dry on her tongue, yet she now felt compelled to swallow it like water.

"Perhaps I am." Another pull of wine went to those twisted lips, drops running down into their strange divots and onto his chin. "Are oysters not to your liking, then?"

Under most circumstances, Christine would have been hard-pressed to turn her nose up at such a meal, but under the dining room's lamplight, their glistening flesh only turned her stomach.

"Not at all," she lied. A pause. The alcohol and her loneliness gave her courage. "I used to eat them all the time as a child. Perros always had such wonderful oysters-it was like plucking grapes off of a vine. Mama used to used to make them into a savory pie, before we moved to Paris and her hands began to shake."

She stopped again, shaken by the sudden longing and worry for her Mama Valerius. Erik said nothing, seemingly basking in the simplicity of Christine's small talk, that strange smile still on his face. She noticed her glass had been emptied and sheepishly poured herself another from the decanter.

"Men lined the wharf," she continued, "selling them shucked on big crates of ice, just plucked from the ocean, like daisies. If we begged Mama or the Professor hard enough, we'd get a penny and eat ourselves sick on them."

"We?" Erik inquired. The smile had slackened slightly.

"Myself and-" Christine started, the name almost dancing off the tip of her tongue. It was only by sheer, foolish luck she didn't outright say the Vicomte's name, but even still, the tiny room swelled with a new energy. Erik sank low into his seat, a long finger lazily tracing the rim of his glass. She dared not continue.

"Hmm. I don't suppose it was your father begging for pennies like some common mendicant," he said, his tone insultingly light. The energy practically crackled, and Christine could suddenly hear all of the blood thrumming through her body with a rage she barely knew or understood.

"How-how dare you talk about my father like that," she stammered, her hands clawing into the arms of her chair. "Let alone at all, considering what you've done to me." She waited for Erik to stand, to shout at her, but he remained seated, his finger still swirling around his cup.

"I have to imagine it's that little friend of yours," he continued easily, as if he hadn't noticed Christine's rebuke at all. "You know, Christine, it's always the rich who seem to be the most eager to take money from others. I'm hardly shocked." He laughed and held out his empty hand in mock supplication. "'Pennies from a poor professor, please! Pennies for a poor Vicomte-!'"

"Enough!" Christine cried, the color gone from her face, her entire body shaking. As if possessed, she stood up from the table and tossed whatever remaining wine was left in her cup into Erik's horrible face. Her aim was sloppy-some of it splashing back onto her starched dress and the damask table runner. A stilted breathing joined the throbbing in her ears; both teacher and apprentice were stuck still, dripping, shocked at one another and themselves.

"You-you have… you have no right to talk about my father or anyone like that," Christine choked out, her voice barely more than a whisper. She waited for him to respond, but he sat there with his wide yellow eyes fixed on her, silent as stone. "I'm... going to my room. To-to bathe and go to bed. Good night."

And before she either lost what remained of her nerve or he found his, she turned around and moved to exit the room. As she put a trembling hand on the brass handle, she heard Erik speak, his voice a low, poisonous hiss.

"Nana," he said. She felt the blood that had been pounding so wildly throughout her body only moments ago now leave her entirely.

"Excuse me?" She couldn't bring herself to turn around, her shoulders hunching up to her ears in anticipation, as if expecting to be struck from across the table.

"If you're going to borrow Erik's things," he continued, "he suggests you don't leave them lying open on the floor so cavalierly."

Christine thought her mortification would truly be it-the very thing that actually managed to kill her in this whole melodrama-but she found one last rally of strength to open the door.

"It must have been an interesting read for you, my Nana ," he spat. "Very….. eye-opening , to say the least. Or wasn't it. Christine?"

And then it flashed before her eyes, the contents of the binder she had found earlier, so filthy and evil and strange, and his awful, awful smirk and his hands around her waist as he held her against him on Cesar and-

"And what if it wasn't?" She heard his weight shift suddenly in his chair, but no footsteps followed. "At least I'd know what it was like, instead of only having pictures to imagine!"

And before her nightmare could do anything else, Christine opened the dining room door and marched out, slamming it shut behind her with a force that belied her short stature and sickly mien.

This was Christine's second mistake.


	3. A Tangent on Christine's Soul

Christine could count the number of times her Papa had ever raised his voice on her hands, so rare was that sort of behavior from him; the first time was shortly after her mother had died, when Christine had quietly inquired whether or not she was coming home to tuck her into bed. The second time had been shortly after they had abandoned their tiny cottage outside of Uppsala and made for the road. It was the first time she had ever slept outside, and the cold earth chilled her through her petticoats and blanket. When she could not quit complaining of the wind's bite, Papa had reproached her ingratitude for the Lord's abundance so severely that she spent the rest of the night shivering quietly.

The one she thought about the most, however, had been a few years before Papa's soul had finally left this earth; she was twelve years old and had been spending a mild summer afternoon calling on friends with Mama Valerius, a delicious breeze weaving through the stone cottages that dotted the shoreline along Perros-Guirec. Mama was hardly glamorous company herself, but the notion of showing off her new linen dress and carefully-practiced French to her neighbors made Christine shiver with excitement.

_La petite suédoise_, they called her, showering her with candies and fruit, enchanted by something which Christine was too young to quite understand. She was sitting on Madame Robiquet's sofa with a glass of lemonade, basking in her own success, when Mama Valerius had asked her to run home to fetch a new piece of music the Professor had recently purchased.

"Give us some music, little bird," Mama said, and the two older women beamed at Christine so sweetly that she was more than happy to oblige them, practically skipping down the winding streets to the Valeriuses charmingly dilapidated house on the outskirts of town. The windows were thrown open to let the sunshine in, and Christine was about to cheekily stick her head in and call out for her Papa-that was, until she heard two voices jabbing away in Swedish.

If she was a good girl, Christine would have turned around and marched straight back to Mama. But unfortunately, the indolent peace of summers in Perros-Guirec made a fight all the more interesting; holding her breath, the girl instead crouched inelegantly beneath the sill,.

"Vidar-it's your soul and Christine's that I'm concerned about," the Professor sighed. "Neither of us are long for this world, and to think-"

"To think what ?" Papa answered, his voice like an ax. "Our souls belong to no one but God himself, and I will die before I see what remains of my family consign themselves to papal nonsense." He continued tuning his violin, and while Christine couldn't see his face, she could hear the anger in the way he drew his bow over its strings. Professor Valerius was quiet, and Christine supposed he was polishing his spectacles on his waistcoat, as was his habit when he was vexed.

Christine's heart seemed to ache, it was beating so quickly-what did the Professor mean by "not long for this world"? By their souls? Papa was older, she knew, but surely not so old as the Professor, nor so old that he was close to death.

"If not yourself, Vidar, think of your daughter," he continued at length. "She's old enough to learn the Catechism and decide for herself. Don't you want her to have a plan when you're gone? A guiding hand to help her navigate the evils in this world?"

A noise tore out from Papa's violin, so loud and violent that Christine nearly topped over into the dirt in surprise. As she landed on her hands, she heard what sounded like a large piece of furniture crash on the floor.

"You know nothing of my daughter or her soul. Christine is a good girl, goodness itself even; it's a shame your fancy books and churches can't tell you something as obvious and plain as the nose on your face."

And with that, Christine heard her father's heavy footsteps leave the study in a hurry, the door slamming behind him. It was all she could do stand up and brush the soil off of her skirt in enough time to run behind the small garden shed on the side of the house, sparing mere seconds before Papa flew out the front door and down the path that led to the cliffs. His eyes were dark and wild, his hair and beard unkempt. Even Christine knew better than to follow him when he was like this.

By the time she had managed to collect herself, Papa had long since disappeared. With clammy palms, she loped to the front of the house; the door still open and swaying gently in the wind. With as much care as she could summon, she entered and closed it behind her, terrified of facing the Professor and being unable to hide the emotion on her face.

It was for naught, for Christine immediately found him in the study, sitting at his desk and twirling his pitch pipe between his hands. A sad, watery smile crossed his lips before he looked out into the garden.

"Christine," he greeted gently, more to the window and less to the girl in front of him.

"Good afternoon, Professor," she answered. "Mama sent me to get some sheet music. The new Offenbach."

"Mm," he replied, continuing to spin his pitch pipe and gaze elsewhere. Normally any request to borrow sheet music from Professor Valerius's collection came with a generous helping of excitement and advice-how to attack the dynamics, where the resonance for certain notes should be placed in the body-but today he said nothing.

"Madame Robiquet requested it," Christine pressed on. "Monsieur bought her a lovely new piano and she asked me to accompany her while she-"

"Christine," the Professor interrupted. He had not turned back to face her. "You are a good girl."

"I think so, Professor," she replied.

"You love your music," he continued. "Your father. That little friend of yours who always comes begging for music like a little rapscallion." At this last item, Christine felt herself blush, too embarrassed to answer. Professor Valerius said none of this with any tinge of malice or condemnation, as if he were stating mathematical sums or cold, scientific facts, but the mention of the Vicomte made her feel strange and guilty.

"I do, Professor."

"Very well. And do you love God? Do you love Jesus? His poor mother Mary who suffered with her son so that He could set us free of sin?"

At this, Christine found herself speechless. God and the Savior were like breathing air, like walking-things she knew were supposed to be important, yet still things she endeavored to think little of. Papa had told her growing up that the world was their church, the paths they walked meditations on the small miracles God bestowed upon man to separate him from animals, who did not know fellowship or love. But it always with a somber tone-with the heavy knowledge that all but said that God was also responsible for her dead mother, their poverty, for every time the tiny family had gone hungry or cold before they came into the Valeriuses good graces. Every night, Papa had bid her to pray to the Lord, and she obliged, but only because it was Papa who demanded it. And slowly, over the years, she had accepted what Papa told her of God as plain, boring reality.

The only thing Papa ever talked about that sparked her little heart's interest in subjects ecclesiastical was the Angel of Music. And even now, she was beginning to doubt that the Angel really existed at all-just another one of Papa's sweet songs.

"Of course you do," Professor Valerius answered when Christine failed to speak. He turned and began to move slowly towards her. "And your father does, as well. And you both know that God is the reason for all the music we create, that we enjoy; that He is the most gifted composer, the only one capable of creating true harmony."

"Professor?" She was now beginning to feel scared-this was how Papa started talking when he came home from his longer walks, talking in riddles with a kinetic desperation that belied and terrified her inexperience with the world.

"Christine," the Professor sighed, "Did you ever consider that, as far as the Lord's music is concerned, that there might be a wrong way to play it? That certain notations are there for guidance and understanding, and that ignoring them only creates… a discordance, so you say?"

"I-I don't understand," she whispered, his grey, cloudy eyes searching hers with a burning that shook her. "I'm sorry, sir." Without knowing exactly why, Christine felt hot tears start to trickle down her cheeks, and before she even knew it, Professor Valerius lead her to one of the squashy armchairs in the room.

"My dear girl," he murmured, plucking the handkerchief from his breast pocket and delicately placing it in her open palms. "I've upset you. Please forgive an old man for thinking out loud. There, there. Let me get you a biscuit, child." And saying thus, he pulled his keys out of his trouser pocket and unlocked one of the drawers at his desk. The Professor pulled out a batted square tin and pried off the lid, revealing a small cache of sablés. He walked back to Christine and extended out his arm.

"I never had a daughter," Professor Valerius said as she sniffled and plucked a biscuit from the tin. "It sounds silly of me, but you and your Papa are the closest thing to children that Edwige and I could ever hope to have, even if you never feel the same way about us. We care very much about the both of you. Do you know that?"

"I know," Christine replied, around a mouthful of the buttery cookie and remaining tears. "You've been so kind to us." She swallowed and found the courage to look the Professor in the eyes. "You were fighting with Papa about his soul. My soul. I don't understand why."

"Ah," he responded, picking up a sablé for himself and staring at it sheepishly. "You heard. Yes, I suppose all of Perros heard." He laughed, but it did not reach his eyes. "Christine, your father is a brilliant artist, but I worry about him. We don't see eye-to-eye on many things, and I accept this as simply a fact of humankind that no man agrees with everything his brother believes. However, as Edwige and I come to see you as our family, matters of the soul become more and more urgent. I am glad he has taught you of God's love, but I lament it is through the wrong avenues." Professor Valerius looked down at his hand and noticed he had crushed the biscuit into fine, powdery bits. His rumpled expression made Christine smile, and the return to his usual scatterbrained mien calmed her rising anxiety.

"I'm afraid I still don't understand, sir," she said. "The wrong avenues?"

"The Catholic Church, Christine," he said. "Your father has the faith, but refuses to have you and himself baptized into it. And without the one true church, I'm afraid, well-" he paused to brush some errant crumbs off of his sleeve, "Well-that one will never truly know the Lord or find respite in heaven with Him."

Christine was too young to have any answer for her mentor, nor could she understand the gravity of his words. She knew the Valeriuses left her and her father to their own devices on Sunday while they worshiped at St. Jacques, the old Catholic church in the center of town. But apart from her curiosity regarding the choir and organist, little was ever said about why she and Papa never joined them.

Moreover, no one had ever thought to mention her mother-cold and long dead in the ground. Was she lost, burning away in some dark hell because of her father's selfishness? Because of her lack of knowledge?

If she was visibly shaken by this revelation, Professor Valerius said nothing. Instead, he wandered over to the piano in the corner of the room and plucked a piece of music off of its stand. When he returned to Christine, he simply patted the top of her head, as if he had been talking to her about a tricky voice lesson or a bout of bad weather.

"You're a smart girl, Christine. I daresay as smart as you are talented. I ask you to consider what we've discussed this afternoon." She numbly stood and accepted the sheets of paper from him. "Perhaps it will sound sweeter to your father hearing you say it-from the mouth of babes, what. Now run along."

The walk back to the Robiquets was the longest of her short life-poor Christine found herself leaning against walls, trees, trying to find her breath, hoping her mother was still somewhere, wondering why the world was so difficult and cruel, how Papa could have let them starve and shiver and tell her to trust in God when none of it provided, when it would only mean she'd inevitably burn to ash, her soul lost forever to the void.

Her soul.

Her soul was a precious thing.

And, catching her breath as she looked out to the sea, vast and terrifying, she realized that it was up to her alone to safeguard it.

When she and Papa were anointed that next year, Christine slept easily again; whatever else happened to her family, she could trust that her soul would be shepherded with the utmost tenderness and love, by a love so indescribable it transcended any mundane connotations she knew of the word.

As she sat shivering in her bathroom, eight years later, five stories below the ground, Christine realized that this was her third mistake.


	4. A Taste of Salt

Christine sat shivering on the bedroom floor, her ear pressed against the seam where the little door met the wall, waiting to bear the brunt of whatever unpleasant passion would take hold of Erik after her display at dinner. Would he scream and foam at her again? Fall at her feet, crying and begging for foregiveness? Neither appealed to Christine, but the silence outside of her room somehow bothered her more. There was _nothing _upon which she could judge her captor's mood—no frustrated chords from the piano, no laughing and ranting under his breath. Perhaps she caught trace of his feet shuffling across the rug in the sitting room, or perhaps it was only her labored breath.

After a certain, interminable length, when it seemed clear that Erik intended to leave her in peace, Christine rose up from the ground. The wine had her reeling; as she steadied herself against the wall, she contemplated opening the door and approaching him by her own volition. She was not so drunk, however, that she'd forgotten how well confronting Erik had ended in the past. And so, both terrified and annoyed, Christine resolved to do as she had originally planned that evening and take her bath.

Swaying, she padded her way to the bathroom as delicately as she could manage, opening the door with the sort of concentration that only comes to the inebriated and paranoid. The gas lamps flickered on, a clever trick of Erik's that once dazzled Christine and now bored her. Though the room itself was small, the way the wicks dimly flickered across the chestnut paneling and creamy damask wallpaper gave it an unfathomable quality; if Christine squinted, the tiled floor bled into the shadows and beyond. It was only the claw-footed bathtub that interrupted the illusion—mundane, almost awkwardly large, the exposed tap pipes a utilitarian mark on an otherwise indulgent setting.

The luxury of hot bath for one and oneself only was not something lost on Christine. As a child, her Papa insisted she content herself on whatever clean water the Lord provided them, whether it be a stream or a cracked basin in a shabby inn. As a young woman, it was in the tepid bath water the Professor's poor maid Agathe lugged into the family tub once a week. And by the time Mama and Christine had settled into their cozy apartment on Rue St. Honoré, it was at one of the public baths that had become all the rage in Paris—much to Agathe's great relief.

On the one hand, the public baths always guaranteed deliciously warm water, enough that Christine could submerge herself entirely below the surface for as long as her heart desired. On the other hand, it meant sharing the water with strangers—women young and old laughing and gossiping with each other like they were having tea at a café, so fecklessly flaunting their naked bodies that it made Christine embarrassed for them. She never lingered longer than she had to, scrubbing herself as hastily as possible, talking to no one, and wrapping herself in the thickest towel she owned.

But here, five stories below the ground, Christine could soak for as long as she'd like, a gift that was soured by the fact there was not a single room in Erik's house that ever felt completely private. Even the bathroom was suspect—the very first time she had attended to her toilette, she had kept a pair of sewing scissors by the lip of the tub, in terror that the wretched man's malice extended beyond words. She could not say when they had disappeared over the last several days. Hadn't she tucked them away neatly in the vanity drawer? Or did she misplace them in a basket of yawn?

But Erik had remained a gentlemen in most respects, had not laid a finger on her since that awful night she had seen him.

Moreover, if Erik wanted something to disappear, it disappeared.

Turning on the ivory taps, the five stories weighed even more heavily upon Christine.

—

There was normal quiet—the kind of quiet that amplified street noise or birds whistling or footfall, the kind of quiet that was not _really_ quiet—and then there was the quiet found only found trapped below the earth. And even that could not compare to sensation Christine experienced as she slid into the bath, submerging herself entirely under the perfumed water, save for the very front of her face. Here, there was nothingness—only the sound of her heart beating in her throat. Here it was easy to forget her predicament and let her mind drift far—farther than the house on the lake, farther than the magnificent lump of the theater.

Eyes closed, hands at her side, she thought, as she frequently did, of the Vicomte; if she concentrated enough, she could remember how it felt—the two of them at the beach, lying out on their backs in the water.

"Why won't you float with me, Christine? You can swim, can't you?" His crooked grin, the sprinkling of freckles on his golden face—young Christine would have walked into the sea to keep the image burned into her head, to not let it slip away the same way she had let her mother's. "I bet you're scared, that's why."

"I am not scared," she huffed, arms akimbo. They were both standing up to their waists in the water—Christine in an old dress and ragged tights, Raoul in cropped trousers that made him look less like a noble and more like a shiphand. "I just don't _like_ it, _my liege." _

"Don't _like _it? What's not to like?"

She sucked on her lower lip and thought for a moment. "I can't see the beach when I'm on my back. I can't see you or Papa. I can't see the island out there. Or the peanut vendors on the beach." She skimmed her fingers across the brackish water and turned her head towards the horizon. "All I can see is the sky, and what would I do if I floated away from here without knowing it?"

The boy remained silent, and Christine could have almost imagined he had actually disappeared, when she saw his hand grab one of hers and lift it up from the water. Her eyes followed in its direction, until she met the vicomte's.

"It's simple," he answered. "I would never let that happen."

They stood like that for some time, nothing but the sound of the tide and other vacationers enjoying the beach ringing in their ears. Something in Christine's chest compelled her to lean forward, as if she could look deeper into Raoul's eyes, as if she could wordlessly communicate how perfect the moment felt.

And then—suddenly, shockingly—-she felt herself falling, Raoul's foot cuffing the back of her ankle with enough force to send her backwards and into the water. Splashing and gasping, her long hair lank across her face, she tried to curse the rotten boy next to her, mouth filled with the taste of salt.

"I have half a mind to scream for the police," she sputtered.

"Don't," Raoul replied.

As she moved to find her feet and rebuke him, a hand was laid across her belly, just skimming the sodden wool.

"Don't," he repeated. And he quietly laid back against the small waves to join her. If Christine had any will left to leave, it was snuffed out by Raoul's hand leaving her abdomen to encircle her wrist. His touch was gentle and timid, as if he could scarcely believe his own boldness, his cold fingers stroking the pulse at her wrist.

The two of them bobbed like corks like that for some time, Christine's ears ringing with the strange ambience of the sea; the only thing that broke her line of vision with the impossibly blue sky above her was the occasional solitary gull. She thought of what she had told Raoul—that she was worried the water would whisk her away from home—and decided that, perhaps, like this, with the Vicomte by her side, it might not be so terrible.

Now, as she languished in the bathtub, the bath oils filling her nostrils, she conjured the tight feeling in her abdomen that ached her that afternoon so long. It had always followed her—from the cusp of womanhood to now. Every handsome man who had ever smiled at her at the Conservatoire, the unending glimpses of shoulders and thighs in dressing rooms, the back muscles of construction workers on the street—it found its way.

"Pristine Christine," she had heard some of chorus women snickering one afternoon not so long ago, when she turned down an offer to go dancing with them at the _Moulin de la Galette _for the dozenth time in months. _Pristine Christine._ She had a reputation, it seemed, and she couldn't decide if she hated it. At least she was left to her solitude, with no assumptions about who Christine was when she was alone in her bed.

_Pristine Christine_. It echoed in her skull every time her fingers slid down beneath her nightgown, made the tightness down there even stronger and warmer than it would have been if people had minded their own business, if they had not put so many expectations on her. All of them—Papa, the Valeriuses, her voice teachers, the company, Erik, the world itself—they all wanted to keep her young and naive.

Naive. She watched her poor Papa heave his last choking breath before his eyes closed forever. How could the world ever call her that, when she had spent weeks starving and shivering in the wilderness because of his own ghosts? How could anyone even think to use that word when she was now buried alive with a demon who hungered for her very soul? They called her pristine, but she had been damned a hundred times over and would be damned another hundred, if her current trajectory was indicative of anything.

Why fret over something as small and sweet as the way her hand made her feel?

Christine's eyes screwed shut, her back arched up from the porcelain beneath her, the tips of her breasts rising into the cool air. Her finger tips grazed a point of such sweetness that she could hear soft gasps over the beating of her heart, over the sloshing bathwater.

There was the Vicomte's hand, now larger and lightly calloused from his naval training. There was the sensation of her slip running over her nipples as she tugged it over her chest every morning. There was the portfolio she found in Erik's library, a print of a woman spread out wantonly on sofa, her skirts hiked up over her knees, and no underthings to be found. They were one and the same, both pretty heads thrown back, although the subject in the drawing was not using her hands to find the same pleasure. Christine was so close to something wonderful, the images running together until they were nothing but a sickly smear of flesh and angles and sparks.

And then she opened her eyes.

This was her fourth mistake.


End file.
